Messages - Shiftkitty

Today I scored a trove of books at the thrift store. They're in decent enough shape, but one of them is missing a page and I'm hoping someone can scan it for me so I can print it and slip it into the book? (Hope this doesn't violate any site rules!)

It's from Legends and Lairs. The book is "Spells and Spellcraft", and the missing page(s) are 89-90.

Got to chatting with an old friend from back in the 1e days. He loved playing a Barbarian (Unearthed Arcana). We recalled the first game he played as "Grundar the Bear". One of the guys had the name stuck in his head and when Grundar entered the stereotypical tavern to meet an old friend (the Fighter) for a promise of "wealth and adventure in the old ruins", the Fighter's player had his PC say "Pull up a chair and join us." However, he actually said "Pull up a bear and join us." Grundar shrugged, left the tavern for a few minutes, knocked out a bear and dragged him in to use as a chair. As if that wasn't giving us enough laughs, at the end of our obligatory adventure introduction, the DM woke the bear up. We were never allowed into that tavern again.

First off, is there a difference between the original Star Frontiers (which I have never seen) and the pink "Alpha Dawn" set?

Second, melee combat uses half of your STR or DEX (you choice each time you use it). Why only half? Is the assumption that your character is more used to lasers, etc? If your character was used to bare-knuckle brawling, an archaic combat enthusiast, etc., why wouldn't they get the whole attribute score?

Unless I'm wrong (as I sometimes am, believe it or not ), infravision works off of temperature. If so, does wearing dark glasses affect it? The glasses would be a solid wall of a different temperature, wouldn't it? And how would this affect a drow wearing shades in the daylight? Do they turn the infravision off? Just a question that came up over coffee.

Have you ever had a player describe an action his PC was taking that was so crafty that you decided to just let it work without rolling for a result? You know, something so creative and entertaining that even as DM you wanted to see it work?

Example: The rest of the party had noticed the dragon waking up, stuffed what gold they could into their pockets, and ran. The Thief (this was 1e) was still stuffing his pockets, having failed to notice the dragon, and angry Red. The dragon made his presence known with an indignant "Ahem!" When the Thief realized his predicament (he would never be able to outrun the dragon's breath weapon), he offered to bargain for his life by showing the dragon a magic trick, and if he had never seen it before, then the Thief could leave with his life. The dragon agreed, having been old enough to know every magic trick in the book. The Thief unfurled the leathery map the party had been following, spread it out on a pile of gold and sat cross legged on it, acting like a mystic from India. He then picked up the leading edge of the map and announced his "ancient magic words", said "Bye-bye" and sledded like a shot down the pile of gold and out the door.

Okay, in a hard-nosed campaign he probably would have been smoked by the dragon before he reached the exit. But this move was so straight out of a light-hearted fantasy movie, even drawing applause from the other players, that I described the dragon staring confusedly at the empty space, thin tendrils of smoke curling upwards from his nostrils, saying "I don't get it."

Any overly creative players out there do something that you decided not to spoil with a dice roll?

Yeah, they do say that you can use dice if you want (and yes, we want), but they really don't provide much in the way of guidelines to do so. They tell you how to score your stats (1-10 with 6 being maximum normal for average humans), but I have yet to find anything official suggesting how to work the dice in. By the book, it's just a mutual story-telling session. I prefer dice for that uncertainty factor.

For the record, the Director decided to make the gaming environment a little more cinematic by providing sodas, popcorn, and other theater-like snacks. While we played the sample game, the other guys actually looked like they were watching it as a movie in their heads. Kudos to the Director, and yes, my partner got extra points for his cinematic leap off the balcony!

Theatrix, by Backstage Press, is a game you have to meet halfway. As Director (DM) you're going to have to improvise a lot. Yes, it's one of those "diceless" games that I never really quite got. Basically, what? You sit around chatting and telling a mutual story over your cappuccinos? There is an option for using dice, but they don't get much into it. We gave it a shot anyway, making up the dice rules as we went, sort of. We mostly based it on a d6 system.

After describing our characters (two of us had the nerve to actually make characters while the others decided to watch a short vignette), we assigned numbers ranging from 1 to 6, with the odd decimal point to give a little edge. The scale runs from 1 to 10, but anything above 6 is really super-duper heroic, and we were just starting.

This was sort of Indiana Jones in Gamma World Meets D&D. My "Actor" was a junkman and explorer of ancient ruins. He found old pre-war tech and either fixed it up for resale or used the parts to make new stuff to sell. He and a friend, a guy with mutant abilities akin to magic, were out in the wastelands scavenging parts off an old air conditioner when they found evidence of a courier who had been attacked and killed, his parcel missing from his pouch. Reporting it to the village council when we returned, we were sent out to get clues as to who did this. We stumbled across a hidden opening in the canyon wall with signs of recent passage of hobnail boots.

All that was pretty much just narrated, but the Director is a pretty good storyteller. When we entered the cave, he actually brought out Thunderspire Labyrinth, a 4e module, It was to serve as the ruins. To attack he had us roll a number of d6 equal to our base ability score (such as Coordination from ranged attacks) and add 1 per point we had in a relevant skill (you pretty much make up your own skills in this game, so I used Pistol at 4.0, added to my Coordination of 3.5, or 3d6+.5+4). To get the monsters' scores he divided their ability scores by 3 rounded down. Every attack could be potentially dodged with a Coordination roll, or withstood by a Stamina roll.

We had to wing it with magic, so the Director told us that any Actor capable of magic had to pick which stat the individual spell was based on, as long as it made sense. For example, shooting a ball of fire from your hands might be based on Intelligence as you bring the right words and gestures to mind, while clairvoyance might be based on your Intuition and charm effects or illusions might work off of your Presence. You roll as you would for an attack and the enemy can choose how they intend (or would be likely) to resist or defend against it.

By the book, the results of combat or any encounter are dictated by the needs of the "Script". For the sake of our game, however, hit points for monsters were 1d6 per monster level; the Cast gets hit points equaling the sum of their stats. While this may prove flawed at higher levels, right now it seems to be working cinematically fine. We've had one combat with a Hobgoblin and four Goblins that actually did flow like a movie scene.

When my Actor realized that we had bitten off more than we could chew, the Director made up a small rule based on what my Actor said. Yes, we decided you could get extra perks for quoting a movie at the right moment. We realized that just two of us was not going to be enough to deal with this bunch. My Actor was about to get killed by two Goblins when the wizard, having finished off the Hobgoblin, made a heroic dive off of the balcony, blasting fireballs from his hands and taking down one of the Goblins. Then I was able to take out the other one. We got out of the dungeon. I mimed slamming a door shut and blocking it, then turned around panting and leaning against the door and said "We're gonna need a bigger boat."

Yes, I got points for quoting "Jaws" at an appropriate time!

We'll likely adjust things as we go, but meanwhile this is actually a pretty fun game for experienced gamers.

By the book, Massive Damage is 50 points or more of damage. So if a creature has 300 hp, you can drop him instantly by only doing 1/6 of his total hp in damage? And doing 3 hp of damage to a 4hp kobold isn't considered "massive" to the kobold? Shouldn't the definition of "massive" be dependent on the target? Could you theoretically drop Tarrasque by reducing him from 840 hp to 790 hp in a single blow? (What did he die of, humiliation?)

Awesome! Having spent more than a little of my life in Arizona and steeped in Navajo and Apache lore, and having more than my share of banditos and pistoleros in my family (including outlaw Augustino Chacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_Chacon ), I think I can bring a touch of authenticity to this setting. After all, most of these guys have never been further west than Ohio!

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